Hell on Wheels (23 page)

She stood over him, her eyes shooting steel daggers as her nostrils flared like an angry bull’s.

Yeah, give him a red flag and she’d certainly charge headlong.

“You’re playing with fire, Ali,” he warned, but she was too angry to heed it.

“Oh, I’m real scared.”

Slowly, purposefully he uncurled his large frame from the deep seat and stood in a fluid series of bunching muscles and flexing tendons. She had to tilt her head far back in order to continue to glare into his impassive face, but she didn’t so much as give an inch.

Nor did she intend to.

She needed to lash out, to bite and scratch and cry. To make someone feel as hopeless and powerless and wretched as she did.

And who better than Nate? The man who’d lied to her, rejected her, and was now attempting to threaten and bully her into giving up the only hope she really had of ever knowing what Grigg was involved in before his death.

“You’ll
tell
me where you’ve hidden that zip drive,” he rumbled as he grabbed her shoulders and gave her a gentle shake.

The sudden narrowing of her eyes should’ve warned him he’d succeeded in pushing her last button, but he did nothing to dodge her clenched fists as she swung them up in a two semi-circles, effectively knocking his trespassing hands away. Nor did he duck the fairly impressive right hook she aimed straight at his solid jaw.

She smiled with vicious glee when his teeth snapped together with a loud clack as his head jerked back on his neck.

Take
that, you low-down, rejecting, brooding, cold-hearted,
lying
sonofagun!

She was startled at how quickly he shook off the blow, missing her opportunity to step out of his reach as he swiftly swooped in to secure her arms against her sides, pulling her into his wide chest until he acted as a flesh-and-bone straight jacket.

Uh-huh, pretty slick move, but it only managed to secure her upper body. Her legs were still free, and boy-howdy, she put them to good use.

Hastily swiveling his hips, he grunted and swallowed a low curse when her sharp knee landed just to the right of his family jewels. Somehow, he managed to pin her struggling legs between the steely power of his thighs until all she could do was hiss and wiggle ineffectually.

She called him every dirty name in the book and several more of her own personal construction. But to her utter dismay, her futile struggles soon turned to heart-wrenching sobs.

Why had Grigg felt he had to lie to her? What had he gotten her involved in? Why did he have to go and die and leave her alone? And why had she been foolish enough to fall for Nate Weller? How could she have let herself feel this way about him?

Was she in love with him? God, she didn’t know, but she was afraid she just might be.

It was all so useless. She felt so helpless. She wanted to scream, but all the fight drained out of her, leaving only despair and grief and exhaustion in its place.

When she sagged bonelessly inside the manacle of his strong arms, he gently, oh so gently, resumed his seat in the recliner, taking her with him into his lap.

“Feel better?” he asked softly when a full sixty seconds passed after her last snotty sniffle.

“Y-yes,” she hesitantly admitted, her head tucked beneath his hard chin, golden blond strands getting stuck in the black whiskers on his jaw. She raised the hem of her shirt and wiped her running nose. She didn’t even care how gross it was. “But I shouldn’t. It’s not right to hit someone.”

Even if she’d known the punch she’d thrown wouldn’t really hurt him, not that unyielding wall of flesh and bone, it still didn’t excuse her tendency toward violence whenever he was around.

“You just make me so…
mad
sometimes. You’re the most infuriating man I’ve ever known, and that’s saying something considering I grew up with Grigg.”

“Y’needed t’vent a little steam or you were gonna explode.”

She pushed back and pinned on him a watery, sidelong look. “Are you saying you intentionally provoked me?”

One big shoulder twitched. She took that to be a
yes
.

“But, why?”

“Like I said, y’needed to vent.”

Well crapola. She felt just
horrible
about the whole thing.

“You are a complete dichotomy, you know that? Just when I’ve crowned you King of the Buttholes, you go and do something…
sweet.
Sweet but kinda weird in the same breath. I mean, who offers themselves up for abuse?”

“It’s part of my charm,” he said, one corner of his fabulously male mouth twitching.

She rolled her eyes. “You just keep telling yourself that.”

Lifting a finger, she lightly touched alarmingly solid bone beneath the harsh bristle of his whiskers. “I’m sorry I hit you. Does your jaw hurt?”

“Yes.”

She winced in sympathy. “Sorry,” she said again.

“Don’t be. Y’did a fabulous job.”

“I did?”

“Yep,” he rubbed at the spot on his jaw and grinned like a loon. “You led with your shoulder. Just like Grigg taught you.”

“Don’t sound so pleased,” she scolded, still a little astonished she’d actually
hit
him…
again
. She’d never laid a hand on anyone in her entire life—the punches she and Grigg had thrown as kids didn’t count—but somehow she’d managed to hit Nate Weller twice. “Knowing how to throw a punch isn’t necessarily something I’m proud of.”

He made the facial equivalent of a shrug. “Next time aim for the nose. It’s a lot more difficult for a man to defend himself with a broken nose. Causes the eyes to water so much it makes it nearly impossible t’see. Not t’mention the blood chokin’ you as it runs down the back of your throat.”

“I didn’t want to hurt you. Not really,” she admitted.

“I know.”

“Nate?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m going with you.”

She watched as he searched her face and almost whooped with victory when he sighed and slowly nodded.

“Okay, but y’do exactly as I say when I say it. No questions. No hesitation. And you’re wearin’ Kevlar. It’s gonna be hot as hell, but that’s my condition.”

“Yes, sir,” she snapped him a salty little salute.

He frowned before he growled, “Get up.” Nearly dumping her on the floor as he suddenly stood.

“Whoa!” She stumbled but managed to catch herself before she face-planted. “What the heck was that abo—
Oh!
” Her cheeks heated as she saw the hard ridge outlined behind his denim-covered fly.

“Yep,” he muttered, “
oh
is right.”

“Well why can’t we just—”

He cut her off, slashing his hand through the air like a karate chop. “Leave it alone, Ali. I
don’t
want to have this reaction t’you, so if you really wanna come with me on this little mission, you’ll just leave it alone. Y’got that?”

Yeah, she got it. Loud and painfully clear. And now here she was, somewhere in Kentucky, hiding out from a mysterious government agent who’d threatened her at gunpoint, sitting on an old paint bucket in the quickly warming garage and trying not to hyperventilate.

She hadn’t really expected any trouble on the trip.

Crimeny, she really
was
naïve. No wonder Grigg had kept her in the dark for so long.

The sound of a footfall outside had her tightening her grip on the little Colt.

Silently standing, she took the shooting stance Grigg had drilled into her. Right arm extended, left hand supporting the edge of her right palm, head tilted ever so slightly so her right eye lined up with the gun’s sights.

All that cloak and dagger stuff in the movies was obviously real, and somehow—because she’d been a complete idiot and insisted on coming along—she’d landed herself right in the middle of it.

Hopefully in real life the ditzy blonde wasn’t the first one to bite the bullet.

She quivered when she realized that last bit didn’t necessarily have to be a euphemism.

“Ali?”

At the sound of Nate’s deep voice, she plopped down on the paint bucket and released her pent up breath in a loud whoosh.

Good heavens, she was so not cut out for this.

“I’m comin’ in,” he said softly. “Don’t shoot me, ’kay?”

“I make no promises,” she told him shakily, prying her finger away from the Colt’s trigger guard.

She shook her head when she heard him chuckle. The man was too strange. Of all the times to break out that elusive laugh, now was not it.

He poked his head around the side door and gave her a sympathetic smile when he saw her wilted condition.

“It’s gonna be all right, sugar,” he told her, pushing the rest of the way into the garage. Walking over to his motorcycle, he began to breakdown his weapon with sure, concise movements.

Sugar. He’d taken to calling her that. She wasn’t sure if she should be flattered or irritated. She certainly didn’t feel like sugar, not today. Today, she felt far too…unmoored to be something as fine and delicate as sugar.

Syrup, maybe. All messy and sticky and slow moving.

Yeah, she could probably go along with being called syrup.

“What’r’ya thinkin’ ’bout?” he asked her while precisely stowing the pieces of his vicious-looking sniper rifle into the foam cutouts of his gun case.

What was she thinking about?

She was thinking about her brother’s death, about his lies not just to her but to the men of Black Knights Inc. She was thinking about the fact that someone was after her, had been after her for months. She was thinking since Grigg’s death her world had turned upside down. She was thinking about what a fool she’d made of herself with Nate, how he’d rejected her despite his body’s obvious clamoring to do just the opposite because he didn’t
want
to have a physical reaction to her…

Of course, before he’d run off to do whatever it was he’d just done, he’d had the audacity to do an about-face and kiss the daylights out of her.

So what the h-e-double-hockey-sticks?

Either he wanted her or he didn’t want her. The back and forth was making her insane.

She glanced up to find him watching her, his expression growing alarmed.

Uh, what was the question again?

Oh, yeah, what was she thinking about?

So much had happened in such a short period of time with so little sleep in between that her usually quick brain was reduced to a slow-moving, doughy mush—about the consistency of pancake batter. Pancake batter to go along with syrup.

How appropriate.

“Pancakes,” she finally told him, figuring that was as close to the truth as anything else.

His face relaxed as he lifted one dark brow. “Hungry?”

“No. Not really. Although, now that I’m thinking about it, I’m starting to get a craving. Weird, huh?”

He lifted a shoulder. “Grigg always said you made the best pancakes.”

A hard knot instantly formed in her stomach, nauseating her.

That’d been her special treat for Grigg whenever he’d come home on leave or during the few visits he’d made back to North Carolina after joining the Knights. Usually that special treat was also shared with whichever girl Grigg’d managed to bring home with him the night before.

That had been his M.O. Hook up with some woman he met in a bar and cart her back to Ali’s spare bedroom for a night of headboard-pounding debauchery—because, of course, he couldn’t take his newest conquest to their parent’s house. He had
some
discretion, after all.

Come
on Ali,
he’d once said when she accused him of being a total hound dog,
a
guy
like
me
works
hard
and
plays
hard. If you’d move that damned bed away from the wall, you wouldn’t even know I was there.

Um, yeah right. ’Cause it was so easy to ignore
Oh, Grigg, yes! Oh, Grigg. Oh, Grigg. Yes
,
yes
, yes!

She smiled sadly, missing her big, stupid, lusty brother like crazy. What she wouldn’t give to wake up tomorrow morning to make pancakes for him and whatever barfly he’d managed to lure home with his masculine wiles.

“Yeah,” she told Nate now, “I do make good pancakes. At least, his lady friends always seemed to like them.”

He cocked his head.

“You know Grigg. He was always with
someone
. Plus…” she frowned and glanced down at the menacing looking gun in her hand. She knew how to handle the weapon—Grigg had made sure of that—but the thing still looked foreign with her pink-tipped fingers curled around the handle. Whose life was she living? Certainly not hers. She was a kindergarten teacher, for Pete’s sake.